Jerusalem, the City of the Great King
We are standing on the Mount of Olives, just behind a modern Russian church, looking directly west across the valley of the Brook Kedron to Mount Moriah and the walled city of Jerusalem. Bethlehem is only six miles away at our left (S.W.); the Sea of Galilee is 70 miles distant at our right; 16 miles behind us the Jordan pours its waters into the Dead Sea; beyond Jerusalem, in the direction in which we are looking now, stand the mountains, and then below their farther slopes the plains of Sharon, and then the shores of the Mediterranean less than 40 miles from here in a straight line.
“Across the valley and under the wall do you see the army of gravestones where innumerable Mohammedans lie buried? Do you notice in the wall, almost in the middle of our range of vision, an elevation having a double arch under it? That is the Golden Gate, which the Turks have walled up because of a tradition that through this gate a conqueror, not of their faith, shall some day enter and possess the city. That large, open square beyond the wall, directly before us, is the most interesting spot in all this city, for on it stands the Dome of the Rock, that large octagonal building. How much of sacred history clusters around that rocky hill! On that plateau, perhaps on the very rock under that done, Abraham laid his son Isaac upon the altar. There, a thousand years later, was Araunah’s threshing-floor which David bought for an altar place, consecrated for all time by the temple that rose in front of it. Before that altar Solomon stood and Hezekiah prayed, and Isaiah beheld his glorious vision.”
(See “Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope,” by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, D.D., with special “keyed” maps, published by Underwood & Underwood.)
From Notos of Travel No. 11, copyright 1904 by Underwood & Underwood.
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